Rolling Stone and Oppenheim Law Ask: Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?

Accountability?

In an era in which almost every bank on Wall Street was entangled in financial scandal, millions of Americans are left in an impoverished hole and billions of dollars in wealth has been destroyed, no one has been held accountable.

Considering these circumstances, Rolling Stone Magazine Writer Matt Taibbi begs the question, “Why isn’t Wall Street in Jail?”

Today’s article highlights a corrupt government culture in many of the agencies that were supposed to protect Americans from banks like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Particularly, there is a glaring problem at the SEC where a revolving door that sends government employees out into to private practice and then back to the government, blurring loyalties and breeding distortion.

And Wall Street’s punishment for their brazen schemes and artificial financial boom? According to Taibbi: “carefully orchestrated settlements — whitewash jobs that involve the firms paying pathetically small fines without even being required to admit wrongdoing.”

Americans who sense two sets of laws in this country are completely correct. One set has developed for the masses, and a second special set of rules exists for the wealthy and powerful. This is not the America many of us remember growing up in.

Join Oppenheim Law next Wednesday, March 9 at 6 PM as Roy Oppenheim discusses how the aftermath of Wall Street’s greed is still affecting homeowners across the country and what you can do to pull yourself out of the hole the banks created.

Tomorrow, we will examine the perspective of arguably the poster child of Wall Street greed with Bernie Madoff’s jailhouse interview.